WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package is being hailed by Democrats and progressive policy advocates as a generational expansion of the social safety net, providing greater food and housing assistance. access to health care and direct help to families, which amounts to a broad attack on the cycle of poverty.
With more than $ 6 billion for food security-related programs, more than $ 25 billion in emergency rental assistance, nearly $ 10 billion in emergency mortgage help for homeowners and extensions of unemployment payments already expanded to the beginning of September, the package is full of provisions designed to help families and individuals survive and recover from the economic difficulties induced by the pandemic.
“When you stay behind and look at it, that’s when you can really appreciate the absolute scope of it,” said Ellen Vollinger, legal director of the Food Research & Action Center, a food security advocacy group. “The scope is impressive and very necessary.”
Several aspects seem to aim to restructure the country’s social safety net and really lift people out of poverty. It’s the Democratic Party’s kind of ambition and somewhat old-fashioned ideal which has observers referring to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.
“We haven’t seen a change like this since FDR. It is saying that families are too big to fail, children are too big to fail, the elderly are too big to fail, ”said Andre Perry, senior member of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. “It is an acknowledgment that the social safety net is not working and was not working before the pandemic.”
Biden himself, signing the bill on Thursday, referred to it as an open attempt to redraw the country’s economic failures in a way that is greater than the pandemic. “This historic legislation aims to rebuild this country’s backbone and give the people of this nation, the workers and the middle class, the people who built the country – a chance to fight,” said Biden.
And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Called it “one of the most transformative and historic bills that any of us will have the opportunity to support”.
Perry, in particular, pointed to the expansion of the child tax credit system as a potentially fundamental change. The legislation provides families with up to $ 3,600 this year for each child and also expands credit to millions of families who currently earn very little to qualify for full benefits.
“It will really affect child poverty,” said Perry.
In promoting the expansion of child tax credit, Democrats came together around an analysis which predicted it would reduce child poverty across the country by 45%.
The legislation extends until September last year, the 15% increase in benefits offered by the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps. It also provides extra funds to administer the expanded SNAP program and to expand access to SNAP online purchases.
The package also includes what represents the largest expansion of federal health insurance aid since the Obama era Affordable Care Act, more than 10 years ago. Several million people could see their health insurance costs reduced, and there is also an incentive for states to expand Medicaid coverage, if they have not already done so.
These changes, however, will not be as immediate as direct cash injections in other areas.
Housing advocates give generally positive comments, saying that massive aid packages for renters and homeowners should be sufficient to avoid the debts incurred so far. “This is an appropriate response for an unprecedented time. Clearly, there is a tremendous need to prevent an eviction tsunami, ”said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
But she also warned that economic difficulties and the need for assistance would extend beyond the end of the pandemic.
“Many of the jobs that low-income workers have lost will not come back immediately,” she said.
Yentel asked Biden to extend the national moratorium on evictions via executive order. The current moratorium, imposed by the Centers for Disease Control as part of the national health emergency, is being challenged in several lawsuits and expires in late March.
Many of the changes in the legislation are temporary, but Democratic advocates and lawmakers are openly talking about making some of them permanent.
“Getting something out of the code is often more difficult than inserting something into the code,” said Richard Neal, chairman of the Chamber’s Media and Media Committee, D-Mass., On Tuesday, referring to the expansion of the project child tax credit relief law.
He added: “It is unlikely that what we did will go away.”
At that point, the expansion of the child tax credit would expire at the end of the year without any kind of Congressional intervention. But permanently enshrining these changes in the law can be a battle. The non-partisan Congressional Joint Taxation Committee estimated the cost of the child tax credit at $ 110 billion, making it one of the most expensive items in the entire package. Extending it for several years would be extremely expensive and would likely attract serious opposition, especially from Republicans.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, called Democrats’ expansion of these credits “new government benefits with no job requirements”, suggesting the shape of the Republican Party’s opposition strategy ahead. But the provision is designed to lift millions of families out of poverty, and progressives believe that there will be tremendous pressure on Republicans to allow change.
Many also want to preserve the bill’s temporarily reinforced income tax credit, and its enhanced tax incentives to care for children and dependents and for sick and family paid sick leave.
A study by the Tax Policy Center concluded that the relief package would reduce federal taxes by 2021 by an average of $ 3,000 per family. Low- and moderate-income households (earning $ 91,000 or less) would receive almost 70% of the tax benefits, the study concluded.
“The question will be whether they want child poverty to rise again,” allowing that credit to expire, said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the liberal Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy.
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Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.